In the Heart of the Night
by SarahFromHell
Summary: Remember the bit in episode 2x05 where Dan spends the night partying with Chuck in an attempt to get some writing ideas? I actually freeze-framed and read the piece of "writing" that came out of that experience, and damn if it wasn't some of the worst crap I've ever read in my life. I decided that I could do better, hence this story. One-shot, Chuck-centric (duh).


A/N: Remember that Gossip Girl episode where Dan spends the night partying with Chuck in an attempt to get some writing ideas? I actually freeze-framed and read the piece of "writing" that came out of that experience, and damn if it wasn't some of the worst crap I've ever read in my life. This story grew out of a riff on Dan's, basically an "I can do better" story, not that that's difficult here.

* * *

"I can make your wildest dreams come true," she says, sidling in close to you to whisper it in your ear: a hooker's promise. She's a hooker like all the other ones, but you'll pretend there's something different in her to be attracted to, some trait that she really shares with a thousand other females but which you'll latch onto so you can let yourself be hers for the night, insert into a prepackaged fantasy cobbled together from the ads in the magazines and some half-remembered snatches of high culture from your high school English classes. Like the All Nippon Airways stewardess from last week, you'd looked at the shape of her eyes and tried to picture her as some Asian Flower knowing the whole idea was both racist and cliché. The blonde whose hair vaguely resembled your stepsister's and so you tried to imagine that it was Incest! Taboo! Forbidden! But nothing is forbidden to you, not really. This one's got cherry red lips and too much eye makeup and drags on her cigarette in an eager way that makes you think: yeah, pack a day at least. In your mind she becomes the _cheap_ hooker, worn out veteran of the trade who'll let you do absolutely anything for the right price, no shame left, who prowls the streets for customers and takes them to a ratty hotel room with day rates. Nastiness and filth and degradation, it's a dream that suits your mood just fine.

You go with her. Into her hotel room, which has day rates but is actually fairly nice. Not Park Avenue nice, but if that was what you wanted you'd have stayed at home.

You are a teenager, but that doesn't really matter. There was another teenage boy with you tonight, not a friend of yours but a loser (_"Brooklyn,"_ you remember the Park Avenue girl's lips curling in disdain) with literary pretensions, wanting a literary experience. He seems to think of this as an adventure and you as heroically rebellious. But is it still rebellion if it's all you ever do?

She strips slowly, teasingly. You lay back and enjoy the show, feeling a faint stirring between your legs and concentrating on it, willing it to grow into something more because if it doesn't...

Don't think about that. When she takes her top off you can see that she's older than she looked at the restaurant, the area above the tits is a dead giveaway. She is about midway between your father's age and your own—or, to put it another way, the same age as the women your father usually sleeps with.

Your father had always wanted someone else. You didn't know who. Sometimes you thought it was because of your mother, who was nothing to you, a photograph of someone you'd never met, beautiful enough you supposed, she smiled in that photo and looked elegant, okay. She'd died giving birth to you. So maybe that was what he wanted: her back and you gone, because you killed her. It pleased you to think that way because it allowed you to think of what might have been, if she'd lived. You can barely imagine what _she_ would have been like, but you can picture the effect on your father. He would've taken less business trips, smiled at you more, not bothered with the private detective and the files. It was a nice thing to think of before falling asleep in the days of your childhood, before you started sleeping with au pairs. You know it isn't true. You know because there is no one in your peer group whose parents' marriage isn't either already over or tenuously glued together by money.

You remember the Park Avenue princess whose virginity you took in the back of the limo, how you'd seduced her for the same reason you'd nearly raped her best friend, because she is beautiful and when you see something that beautiful, you feel driven to destroy it. For most of your lives she'd dated the golden-boy scion of New York's oldest political family. It was only after the golden boy dumped her that she came to you. You remember her apartment, everything white and airy, the maid following like a shadow. She was a straight-A student, dressed fashionably but conservatively, hair perfectly coiffed and photogenic smile always ready. Only you and her best friend knew about the bulimia.

You'd rejected her over and over, and still she came back. You didn't understand; she was supposed to be a bitch to everybody. In the limo she'd been a virgin, but she hadn't acted the way virgins are supposed to act, scared and hesitant. Nor had she moaned and giggled the way whores do. She'd been driven, physically needier than you, almost too ready. Her nails had left scars on your back that took a long time to fade.

("There's a reason why you're always alone.")

Hurt her. Destroy everything she has, her social standing if she ever manages to regain it, her chances with every new boyfriend she throws herself at, her relationship with her best friend. (Who is loose-limbed and golden-haired and perfect, coltish charm and friendly smiles thrown out to the world for no reason in particular, and who she secretly hates for all the same reasons you do.)

The woman in bed with you right now will hurt you if you ask her to. She'd like that, you think. You don't ask.

She has even bigger tits than you realized when you first saw her, and the muscular legs of a pole dancer. She is mind-blowingly sexy, every boy's wet dream, she is exactly the same as the blonde girl and the Japanese girl. Just do it, just fuck her anyway. You don't love anyone. Checks on birthdays, checks on Christmas. The staff will take care of your every need, yes, even those, although it is rather disgusting. You never knew what any of the business trips were for, your father never honored you with that information. Some of them, most of them even, might have been legitimate. Depending on how one defined the word. You don't know the details but you read up secretly on the general story, knowing you never would be but wanting to be a worthy son, a worthy heir. Secret handshakes back in the the 70's, "Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning." This is real estate in New York.

The woman's face blurs for a second in your vision, and you see that she is innocent. No matter how many how many men she's fucked, no matter how many drugs she might have done, she is still better than you.

"It's not going to work."

"That's okay, baby." She leans in to kiss you again. You push her away.

"It _isn't going to work,_ did you not hear me?"

She shrugs. "Do you want me to leave?"

"No." You motion her back to the bed. She sits down on the side and you crawl back to her and put your arms around her. "Just hold me," you whisper. And she does. And in that moment you are profoundly thankful that she is a whore. Because whores don't judge.

She is a warm body, a bit of pretend connection to hold onto, deep in the heart of the night. She is bought and paid for and you will never see her again, she will never look you in the eye unless you want her to...

You won't get it up with her, but you'll stay with her all night. Because nothing is forbidden, so it doesn't really matter when you come home.

You think again of the Park Avenue princess. You wish you had never met her.

_Before fucking her, I never realized just how empty my life was._


End file.
